My Father’s Will (aka A Special Promise) is a Manhattan-based love story written, directed and produced in 2009 by a major NYC landlord. Landlord as auteur? Who knew? Part Cinderalla story/ part fish out of water tale with the fish in this case being a billionaire playboy pretending to be poor, the film was shown at Sundance and stars Ron Silver in his last screen role. Mr. Big didn’t exploit his power and property pedigree to publicize this film so neither will I. It looks good.
The Night Watch 2007 by Max Ferguson
Oil on canvas Private Collection
In NYC, the concept of a “luxury” building is elastic and can be anything with a pulse and a doorman or something truly spectacular like Frank Owen Goldberg’s 8 Spruce Street tower, “New York”. (Like Norma Jean Baker and Archibald Leach, Frank wasn’t always Gehry). Here’s what it takes now, to get an apartment in the city:
Rental Application Checklist
Elvis, New York, 1956
From Elvis at 21, Albert Wertheimer photograph
Elvis and his landlord, the NYC rabbi’s wife, Jeanette Fruchter, Memphis circa 1953-1954
Yes, this post is a bit of a stretch, but since it involves NYC-born landlords, rock (and Elvis), I can’t help myself. My friends will not be surprised. –Landlordrocknyc
From an Elvis fan site: “The two-store Victorian brick building on Alabama Avenue with a sweeping front porch, was home to the Presleys from April 1953 until late 1954. There were just two apartments in the house. The family paid $50.00 a month to rent a small apartment, payable to Mrs. Dubrovner, whose husband had been a kosher butcher in New York and who lived down the street herself, and both Mrs. Dubrovner and the Presley’s upstairs neighbors, New York Orthodox Rabbi Alfred Fruchter and his wife, Jeanette, showed a considerable amount of kindness, and financial consideration toward the new tenants.”
Vernon and Gladys occupied the only bedroom. Elvis’ grandmother Minnie Mae slept on a cot in the dining room. Elvis Presley took the couch each night. Mrs. Fruchter later told an interviewer, “They never had much. There wasn’t even a decent chair to sit down in. About all they had was this cheap little radio”. Mrs. Fruchter remembered Saturday afternoons when Elvis Presley and Vernon would polish Elvis’ ten-year-old Lincoln. Others recalled seeing Elvis Presley walk down the street with his guitar, his hair spilling over the collar of his pink shirt.”
The Presley family was living here when Elvis made his first recording at Memphis Recording Service, (he paid $6 for the privilege) during the summer of 1953 and when he got the first call from Marion Keisker phoning for Sam Phillips/Sun Records in 1954 . The Presley’s didn’t have a phone so Rabbi Fruchter took the call.
And on the day that rock ‘n roll began (with the Sun Record’s release of Elvis’ first record, That’s Alright Mama on July 19, 1954,) his NYC-born landlord and family friend Rabbi Fruchter lent him a phonograph so he could hear it.
That’s Alright Mama, July 19, 1954 .The first rock song ever.
My Happiness, $ 6 demo made by Elvis at Sun Records so he could hear his own voice on a recording.
.Rare Early Interview in NYC, 1956
Even in the crazy, complex ,Byzantine and often dysfunctional world of New York housing law, where landlords have been known to pose as adult children of the elderly tenants they are trying to evict and tenants litigate for their right to house lizards and snakes and receive live bugs by mail to feed them, these beauties are in a NY league of their own:
NYC’s lousiest landlords according
to NYC Public Advocate Bill de Bassio:
http://advocate.nyc.gov/landlord-watchlist
NYC’s most terrible tenants according to
The Village Voice :
Trump is arguably New York’s (and the world’s) most famous real estate guy. We joke about his hair. And so does he. But take a gander at the handsome hunk of burning ambition that was a younger Donald Trump.
I don’t know which building he’s holding in his gotta-have -it NYC hands or the year of the photograph. If anyone does know, please comment below.Thanks. – Landlordrocknyc
Amanda Burden’s mom, style icon Babe Paley, in New York in the 1950’s
The Paley Residence, St. Regis Hotel
From Vanity Fair article “New York’s Princess”:
Amanda Burden’s family pedigree is awesome: her father, Stanley Grafton Mortimer Jr., was an heir to the Standard Oil fortune; her mother—with whom she had a complicated relationship—was the socialite and fashion icon Barbara “Babe” Paley, the queen of Capote’s elite “swans.” Her stepmother, Kathleen Mortimer, was a daughter of Averell Harriman, the railroad heir and United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, while her stepfather, William S. Paley, founder of CBS, was a “tremendous influence,” she told me, via his passion for architecture, urban design, and art. (Paley owned one of the world’s great art collections.)
She has been married twice, each time to a powerful man—to S. Carter Burden Jr., the multi-millionaire descendant of Commodore Vanderbilt (and former aide to Robert Kennedy), and to Steven J. Ross, the head of Warner Communications. She’s often seen about town with her “intermittent inamorata”—as New York magazine once put it—Charlie Rose.
http://video.forbes.com/fvn/lifestyle/65-million-dollar-penthouse/
According to the Wall Street Journal, Denise Rich has NYC and the USA in her rear view mirror:
Another wealthy American has given up U.S. citizenship and the taxes that go with it: Denise Rich, the Grammy-award-nominated songwriter and ex-wife of commodities trader Marc Rich. Rich’s maiden name, Denise Eisenberg, appeared in the Federal Register on April 30 on a quarterly list giving the names of those who turned in their passports or green cards.
Now Page Six is reporting that music mogul (and Rich’s upstairs neighbor) David Geffen paid $54 million for her 17 room, 12,000 sq. foot ,785 Fifth Avenue duplex penthouse. Asking price, according to the Corcoran listing, was $65 million. 
It is the highest price paid for a co-op in NY history. Ihttp://video.forbes.com/fvn/lifestyle/65-million-dollar-penthouse/
Pete Turner, New York 1958
landlordrocknyc 